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Ironic pg passed up philosophy in his search for immortality. Not only is that a focus of philosophy, even in today's materialist worldview, but philosophers a

by yters 6y ago

Ironic pg passed up philosophy in his search for immortality. Not only is that a focus of philosophy, even in today's materialist worldview, but philosophers are some of the most ancient and best preserved thinkers. The ideas of the ancient greek philosophers still hold sway today, even in popular culture, see Plato and The Matrix, or how the US government is organized in checks and balances to preserve liberty. In fact, pretty much every other aspect of society could be said to be downstream from philosophy.

igravious 6y ago
pg has a whole essay[0] where he dismisses practically the entirety of Western philosophy and the value or use of the study thereof. consider the difference between, “All I knew at the time was that I kept taking philosophy courses and they kept being boring.” and, “All I knew at the time was that I kept taking philosophy courses and I kept finding them boring.” recasting the first as the second puts some of the onus on the author, pg is too good of an essayist and too thoughtful a writer to inadvertently overlook this distinction. and consider the whole paragraph beforehand, “Though I liked programming, I didn't plan to study it in college. In college I was going to study philosophy, which sounded much more powerful. It seemed, to my naive high school self, to be the study of the ultimate truths, compared to which the things studied in other fields would be mere domain knowledge. What I discovered when I got to college was that the other fields took up so much of the space of ideas that there wasn't much left for these supposed ultimate truths. All that seemed left for philosophy were edge cases that people in other fields felt could safely be ignored.” that last sentence is a remarkably dismissive throwaway statement. just because something doesn't have value for you or you don't see how something might have value for you, you don't need to make out that it has very little intrinsic value. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
- yters 6y ago
  Yes, pg comes across as remarkably uninformed about philosophy. But, it is a general tendency I notice among programmers, including myself, to dismiss philosophy as vague speculation. The accusation is as old as Aristophanes' play The Clouds mocking Socrates for his questioning of the status quo. Yet you don't condemn bumbling absentminded professors to death, as Aristophanes did to Socrates during his trial. I believe the dismissal of philosophy has a deeper cause, perhaps because it poses uncomfortable questions. Regarding PG's essay, I don't think it is fair to say metaphysics is a failed project. For instance, deeply thinking about whether things can be infinitely divisible led to the concept of the infinitesimal, which led to the discovery of calculus. If any field of math can be said to be useful, calculus surely is. None of our modern IT would exist without it, nor things like rockets, flight, material engineering, etc. Yet calculus is based on the non physical notion of infinite division that Aristotle discussed in his metaphysics. As for Plato and math, in Meno Socrates leads a boy to understand the existence of irrational numbers, which the Pythagoreans had executed its member for discovering. So not only are ancient Greek philosophers discovering deep useful mathematical truths, they are also speaking truth to power at the same time. Imagine if math were outlawed under threat of death!
  - slibhb 6y ago
    He doesn't come off as uninformed. Plenty of philosophers who were well informed have variously proclaimed the death of philosopy or that philosophy is useless or that it has reached the end of its usefulness. Hume foreclosed on the possibility of metaphysics altogether. Kant disagreed but considered all metaphysics prior to him a failed project. Since Kant we've burrowed into the human mind and into human language. It's not clear that this has borne fruit. It's also not clear that it hasn't. But informed people can disagree. > Regarding PG's essay, I don't think it is fair to say metaphysics is a failed project. For instance, deeply thinking about whether things can be infinitely divisible led to the concept of the infinitesimal, which led to the discovery of calculus. If any field of math can be said to be useful, calculus surely is. None of our modern IT would exist without it, nor things like rockets, flight, material engineering, etc. Yet calculus is based on the non physical notion of infinite division that Aristotle discussed in his metaphysics. I think your perspective is perfectly valid (and well-represented). You're saying "even if metaphysics is impossible, the pursuit of metaphysics has proven useful". Fair enough.
    - yters 6y ago
      Alright, I will abrogate uninformed to misinformed. The latter is worse because it blinds PG. Yes, exactly, Aristotle's project was supremely successful and one of its fruits is the calculus that underlies modern science and technology. How is that for immortality? I'd like to see PG discard that part of ancient philosophy.
    - yters 6y ago
      I will follow up my negative take on pg with a positive. He already has a lot of flack for that essay online. I do agree with the general frustration. Philosophy taught in school seems to somehow miss the mark in our scientific discourse, and my exposure in school left me quite disatissfied. So, I do agree with PG's overall approach of starting with concrete useful things and generalizing from there. After all, Plato and Aristotle had a very concrete purpose for their philosophizing, which was: how does one live a good life? That is why Socrates went around asking all the sophists how to become virtuous, since virtue for him is defined as being skilled at living the good life. A fair amount of subsequent philosophers missed this original goal, and I suspect that is why a lot of philosophy seems pointless.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by yters 6y ago

igravious 6y ago

pg has a whole essay[0] where he dismisses practically the entirety of Western philosophy and the value or use of the study thereof. consider the difference between, “All I knew at the time was that I kept taking philosophy courses and they kept being boring.” and, “All I knew at the time was that I kept taking philosophy courses and I kept finding them boring.” recasting the first as the second puts some of the onus on the author, pg is too good of an essayist and too thoughtful a writer to inadvertently overlook this distinction. and consider the whole paragraph beforehand, “Though I liked programming, I didn't plan to study it in college. In college I was going to study philosophy, which sounded much more powerful. It seemed, to my naive high school self, to be the study of the ultimate truths, compared to which the things studied in other fields would be mere domain knowledge. What I discovered when I got to college was that the other fields took up so much of the space of ideas that there wasn't much left for these supposed ultimate truths. All that seemed left for philosophy were edge cases that people in other fields felt could safely be ignored.” that last sentence is a remarkably dismissive throwaway statement. just because something doesn't have value for you or you don't see how something might have value for you, you don't need to make out that it has very little intrinsic value. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

yters 6y ago
Yes, pg comes across as remarkably uninformed about philosophy. But, it is a general tendency I notice among programmers, including myself, to dismiss philosophy as vague speculation. The accusation is as old as Aristophanes' play The Clouds mocking Socrates for his questioning of the status quo. Yet you don't condemn bumbling absentminded professors to death, as Aristophanes did to Socrates during his trial. I believe the dismissal of philosophy has a deeper cause, perhaps because it poses uncomfortable questions. Regarding PG's essay, I don't think it is fair to say metaphysics is a failed project. For instance, deeply thinking about whether things can be infinitely divisible led to the concept of the infinitesimal, which led to the discovery of calculus. If any field of math can be said to be useful, calculus surely is. None of our modern IT would exist without it, nor things like rockets, flight, material engineering, etc. Yet calculus is based on the non physical notion of infinite division that Aristotle discussed in his metaphysics. As for Plato and math, in Meno Socrates leads a boy to understand the existence of irrational numbers, which the Pythagoreans had executed its member for discovering. So not only are ancient Greek philosophers discovering deep useful mathematical truths, they are also speaking truth to power at the same time. Imagine if math were outlawed under threat of death!
- slibhb 6y ago
  He doesn't come off as uninformed. Plenty of philosophers who were well informed have variously proclaimed the death of philosopy or that philosophy is useless or that it has reached the end of its usefulness. Hume foreclosed on the possibility of metaphysics altogether. Kant disagreed but considered all metaphysics prior to him a failed project. Since Kant we've burrowed into the human mind and into human language. It's not clear that this has borne fruit. It's also not clear that it hasn't. But informed people can disagree. > Regarding PG's essay, I don't think it is fair to say metaphysics is a failed project. For instance, deeply thinking about whether things can be infinitely divisible led to the concept of the infinitesimal, which led to the discovery of calculus. If any field of math can be said to be useful, calculus surely is. None of our modern IT would exist without it, nor things like rockets, flight, material engineering, etc. Yet calculus is based on the non physical notion of infinite division that Aristotle discussed in his metaphysics. I think your perspective is perfectly valid (and well-represented). You're saying "even if metaphysics is impossible, the pursuit of metaphysics has proven useful". Fair enough.
  - yters 6y ago
    Alright, I will abrogate uninformed to misinformed. The latter is worse because it blinds PG. Yes, exactly, Aristotle's project was supremely successful and one of its fruits is the calculus that underlies modern science and technology. How is that for immortality? I'd like to see PG discard that part of ancient philosophy.
  - yters 6y ago
    I will follow up my negative take on pg with a positive. He already has a lot of flack for that essay online. I do agree with the general frustration. Philosophy taught in school seems to somehow miss the mark in our scientific discourse, and my exposure in school left me quite disatissfied. So, I do agree with PG's overall approach of starting with concrete useful things and generalizing from there. After all, Plato and Aristotle had a very concrete purpose for their philosophizing, which was: how does one live a good life? That is why Socrates went around asking all the sophists how to become virtuous, since virtue for him is defined as being skilled at living the good life. A fair amount of subsequent philosophers missed this original goal, and I suspect that is why a lot of philosophy seems pointless.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]